Web Standards

The World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) is an international consortium where Web standards are developed. Mission : To lead the WWW to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web

A major chunk of the population suffers from some of the impairment. The target segment for accessibility includes – Visual, Hearing, Old age, low Literacy, low bandwidth connections

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - Explains to Web content developers how to make content accessible for people with disabilities

Section 508 and ADA (American with Disabilities Act) are laws that govern Web accessibility in US

Browser Compatibility

Different web browsers are created by different organizations, user-interface enhancements. The designer must devise a strategy that accounts for this possible variation to ensure that a website can still be used without the enhancement or only use features that are supported by ‘all’ browsers.

Testing the Browser Compatibility of Web sites across various browsers and operating systems

Readability

Readability is the measure of how easy to read and comprehend a document

Reading level algorithms only provide a rough guide, but can give a useful indication as to whether you've pitched your content at the right level for your intended audience

Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid are reading level algorithms that can be helpful in determining how readable your content is

Web Page Speed Analysis

Web page speed is based on page size, composition, and download time.

Page weight is a measurement of the file size of a Web page that includes the combined size of all the elements of the page, including HTML files, images, audio or video, Flash animation, etc.

Reducing the page weight obviously improve the performance of the web site

Tools Usage

Tools

Description

HTML Validator

To check the HTML code as per W3C standards. This validator checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML etc

Link Checker

To check the Link navigations as per W3C standards. Link Checker looks for issues in links, anchors and referenced objects in a Web page, or recursively on a whole Web site

Other Tool

Analysis for a XXX Website

This case study provides the effective usage of free online tools available to test the XXX Website

Evaluator

Standards

Errors

Warning

HTML

W3C

123

107

Link Checker

W3C

1

110

CSS

W3C

49

203

HTML

WDG

30

21

Not an issue:Though these errors are reported, it doesn’t affect the core functionality.

Nice to have:The ease of displaying in various browsers, PDA, Pagers etc.

* All the results reported were w.r.t the XXX Website

Accessibility analysis using WAVE

Web pages

No of Errors

Home page

29

Collection page

55

Product page

46

Shopping Cart

27

Sign in - check out

24

Recipient page

36

Billing page

48

Review order page

79

Not an issue:Within a given system configuration we will not have any issues.

Nice to Have: The web page is assured to meet WCAG standards and also accessible at any situation. (The errors reported are “Alt text” missing for the images, links, form labels. The error will be critical to access, if the page is not fully loaded.)

47 browsers showed positive results for the XXX Website. Almost all the widely used browsers were able to access the site

Evaluator

Value

Gunning Fox Index

10.89

Flesh Reading Ease

52.04

Flesh Kincaid Grade

6.92

Gunning Fox index and Flesh Kincaid, the value represents number of schoolings required to read the content. For example if the value is sixteen, the sixteen years of schoolings is required to read the content

For Flesh Reading Ease, the result is an index number that rates the text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. 60 – 70 is standard value and we stand at only 52.04 (Almost Near but still can reach the Standards)

Web Page Speed Analysis

Test

Units

Remarks

Status

Total HTML

1

The Total HTML should be 1

Pass

Total Objects

93

The Optimum number of object should be <20

Warning

Total Images

69

The images should be lowered for quick loading

Warning

Total CSS

5

The CSS should be lowered for quick loading

Caution

Total Size

735Kb

The optimum size should be < 100Kb

Warning

Total Script

18

The total script should be lowered for quick loading

Warning

HTML Size

67Kb

The Optimum HTML size should be <50Kb

Caution

Image Size

390Kb

The Optimum Image size should be <100Kb

Warning

Script Size

223Kb

The Optimum Script size should be <20Kb

Warning

CSS size

55Kb

The Optimum CSS Size should be <55Kb

Warning

Multi Size

0

The Multimedia size should be < 10Kb

Pass

Nice to Have: The Page size – Images, CSS, HTML can be decreased so that the pages gets loaded faster

Note: This depends on parameters like bandwidth, System Configuration etc..

Accessibility – Easy accessibility of website across the various category of people

Once the site is W3C standard compliant, then the site shall have the W3C logo

Conclusion

The Accessibility can be improvised to WCAG standard and open a new path for Disabled customers

Writing web pages in accordance with the standards shortens site development time and makes pages easier to maintain. Debugging and troubleshooting become easier, because the code follows a standard

Cross Browser testing can ensure that the Website can be used by the largest possible audience, with minimal variation in the user-experience

The Readability Test provides prediction of the reading ease of the document with respect to sentence length and polysyllabic words. The results shall be used with Good writing style guidelines to increase the readability

Lower page load times create more comfortable visitors. The Website brand perception will be enhanced.